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That's true, the cylinder only had one bone, not multiple bones. I guess I just assumed that if it works with one it will work with more than one. But you're right, that may not be a good assumption.
Maybe I'll trying rigging a cylinder with two bones, like an arm with an elbow joint, and see if it still works.
Wow, this might be the very first time I use Carrara rigging. I've always done it elsewhere. :)
I'm always astonished at how fast and well you are able to model stuff diomede, your tips have been instrumental in me learning the little that I know of how to model, but I'm just not a natural at it :) Any chance of talking you into making these available for the community? I ask because I do all my dynamic hairsets on a low poly v4 proxy that I got from a PhilW's courses. I'd love to give some free hairsets I've made to the community but I'm not creating for direct figure use (M4/V4/Genesis/Genesis2); I'm drawing them onto a low poly figure which the primary character wears invisibly like conforming clothing (this makes the sims super fast and with very realistic effect). I've been thinking that what's needed is one common low poly proxy that's symmetrical, and then it can be repurposed to be boned for any figure, and I (or anyone) could create dynamic hair for that figure and then it would be available to the community at large, ready to go.
But I kind of suck at organic modeling... :) Anyway, I thought it might not hurt to ask.
That's true, the cylinder only had one bone, not multiple bones. I guess I just assumed that if it works with one it will work with more than one. But you're right, that may not be a good assumption.
Maybe I'll trying rigging a cylinder with two bones, like an arm with an elbow joint, and see if it still works.
Wow, this might be the very first time I use Carrara rigging. I've always done it elsewhere. :)
I tried it with several bones in a cylinder, same sort of test. The soft body attach works for the root bone fine, but the rest of the bones still move but the mesh doesn't seem to follow them anymore. I may be doing it wrong though (probably am, as I'm not that familiar with any of this)
I'm always astonished at how fast and well you are able to model stuff diomede, your tips have been instrumental in me learning the little that I know of how to model, but I'm just not a natural at it :) Any chance of talking you into making these available for the community? I ask because I do all my dynamic hairsets on a low poly v4 proxy that I got from a PhilW's courses. I'd love to give some free hairsets I've made to the community but I'm not creating for direct figure use (M4/V4/Genesis/Genesis2); I'm drawing them onto a low poly figure which the primary character wears invisibly like conforming clothing (this makes the sims super fast and with very realistic effect). I've been thinking that what's needed is one common low poly proxy that's symmetrical, and then it can be repurposed to be boned for any figure, and I (or anyone) could create dynamic hair for that figure and then it would be available to the community at large, ready to go.
But I kind of suck at organic modeling... :) Anyway, I thought it might not hurt to ask.
Sure. It seems fast because I already have the base to start from. It will have to wait until later in the weekend. Unfortunately, then everyone will see how crude my meshes are, especially around the fingers and joints. Appreciate the kind words. And very generous idea that you have regarding the hair proxy. It would be a big hit.
Edit: Just a reminder that to have the proxy follow the figures will be more complicated than just having the mesh. In the case of genesis and genesis 2, I have had problems with hair if I have morphed the underlying figure. Not sure if that would affect your project.
Yeah I made a long cylinder to simulate an arm, added two bones, rotated one, but during the sim the mesh doesn't follow the bones. However, delete one of the bones, and it works okay. The arm tube rotates fine, follows the single bone, and also collides with the cloth while in motion.
Strange. I'm flummoxed. And bamboozled.
So close, yet so far. But clearly it means that there is an ALMOST implemented "collision with moving objects" in there, and we've seen it work fine in older releases.
Maybe jonstark could make a trip to Salt Lake for us, bring some pizzas and coke, and when everyone at DAZ is busy stuffing themselves on Dominos, he can pull one of the programmers off to the side and say "Hey, dude, do us a favor...Bullet....collision with moving objects...please dude", and look very sad and forlorn... :)
I agree. This is so close that I am convinced there is already a solution. I hope you keep sharing your results. Some great stuff.
As you all know, I can't test this...
Anyway, diomede mentioned in an earlier post that using the proxy shapes parented to the different bones didn't look right because they were separate meshes and when the joints bent, gaps between them opened up- am I understanding the issue so far?
What about making a single, low poly mesh that follows the shape of the figure that is supposed to be wearing clothes, Then select the proxy mesh and the hip bone of the figure, then under the Animation Menu use the attach skeleton command? Then if there are problems with the proxy mesh, use weight painting to adjust the influences so that the proxy follows the rig.
You could then try the soft body attach stuff using the proxy. I don't know if it will treat it like a rigged object or not, but it couldn't hurt to try.
I dunno...maybe the best way is just export the V4 or whatever mesh (just select "Model" in the instances tab in the character's dropdown, then File/Export) and save it as an OBJ. Then bring it into your modeller and break it into pieces (forarm, shoulder, shin, thigh, etc.), then import those into your scene and attach those to the corresponding V4 character parts and you're good to go. You can also enlarge each piece a bit so it's slightly larger and you won't get poke thru. And it might help the issues at the joints where you don't have a continuous mesh.
And then the problem comes when you morph your character, and suddenly the "suit of armor" no longer fits....
But I suppose it's better than nothing.
BTW, personally I don't think you need a low-poly proxy mesh for Bullet cloth. I recall doing some tests long ago that showed that, surprisingly, it made little or no difference. Maybe it helps for dynamic hair (I haven't tried), but a low poly proxy for Bullet has always seemed like an unnecessary step. So you might want to test it a bit. There are probably better and less time consuming ways to speed up the simulations if it's really that bad, IMO. And one way, that I keep hammering on, is making sure your mesh is VERY clean and uniform going in. And making a low poly proxy could do just the opposite it you don't do it right, and make things worse.
Oh, I just read Evil's post...
Yeah, that was going to be the solution IF this would have worked with a rigged figure with more than one bone, and the real issue was a bad or too much mesh choking the Bullet sim. But apparently the real culprit is this method doesn't work with a rigged figure with more than one bone.
JoeMamma, PhilW steered us to the low poly mesh of V4 a while back. It's perfect for this purpose. I am using the 4k mesh.
Hey, wait a minute....
When you export the V4 mesh as an .obj, you can re-import it into Carrara and during the import specify that each material is a separate polymesh. That way the suit of armor is already in bite sized pieces for you. Then you can just move each piece over to the real, rigged V4 and make the suit of armor....
I think.... :) :)
That's fine, I just don't think it's necessary. Like I already posted, just use the existing mesh as an .obj. It's already broken into parts you can use. IMO, the "low poly" aspect of it doesn't really matter. But whatever works for you is fine.
What I'm doing is, like I said, exporting the V4 mesh as an .obj. Then I bring it into Hex (cuz I hate the Carrara modeller and like Hex) and it brings all of the converted polymeshes in separately (forearm, shin, shoulder, head, torso, etc.). So the model is already broken down into parts for you.
Then you can do any modifications you might want, and then save that as a .CAR file. Then load that into Carrara and all of the pieces come in separately, ready to be converted to softbody/SB attach objects. So just, like I say, move them over to align with the real, rigged character and you're all set. No need to go to any other meshes or break it into pieces.
All you might want to do in Hex is maybe scale up the pieces a tad so they're a tiny bit larger than the actual character.
That's fine, I just don't think it's necessary. Like I already posted, just use the existing mesh as an .obj. It's already broken into parts you can use. IMO, the "low poly" aspect of it doesn't really matter. But whatever works for you is fine.
Our posts crosses on the way in. Using the obj import to split up the mesh is a great idea.
Oh, and the other benefit of just exporting the existing mesh as an .obj, instead of using a different mesh, like a low poly proxy mesh, is that the existing mesh already has all the morphs applied, so the exported .obj will be the morphed mesh, which is exactly what you want. No need to tweak the suit of armor to match the morphed mesh...
Thank you very much in advance! And no rush, just whenever you get a chance. :) Crudeness doesn't matter at all, the mesh will be invisible anyway when used, it's just something for the hair to collide against and do much faster and more stable calculations for the animation simulations than using. Although I imagine you're definition of 'crude' in modeling is much closer to my definition of 'very fine and detailed' :) The dynamic hair itself never collides with the actual character (I have collisions unchecked for anything high poly in the scene) so nothing that the Genesis1 or 2 actually does should have any ability to impact the hair at all (aside from the movements it makes) though it will take testing to be sure. I think if we can develop a 'universal' hair proxy figure, we can then develop a library of hairs that can be used on any figure. As it stand now, if I love lets say 3d Celebrity's Desire hair, I can only use it on V4. If I want to use it on Genesis I'm out of luck, since it's grown out of V4's scalp and will only recognize that mesh as valid. But an invisible hair proxy becomes an any-character solution, and I know I can develop several hair styles for it I could put out for the community that would be ready to go with the right settings for realistic dynamic animation use immediately, and others could contribute as well (eventually some might even want to make for-sale hairsets in the Daz store). If we have a way of putting realistic moving and reacting dynamic hair on the newer figures, then maybe more users will start using them, and more renders and animation displays for more people 'hey you are really missing out, c'mon into the Carrara pool, the water is fine...' etc.
Actually that's very interesting if high poly count doesn't make any difference for the bullet sim, we'd better give that a few tests to confirm. The hair sim uses a different physics but I can tell you with a low poly proxy I'm doing complicated sims with gravity, movements, fairly complex hair styles, direction forces etc in a matter of usually under 30 seconds per sim (most are less than 10 seconds), but if I leave something high poly in the scene that the hair might collide against I know it immediately because the sim slows to an absolute crawl. I just assumed (possibly incorrectly) that in Bullet the more polys meant more complicated the calculations would be which meant slower physics sims.
I've searched for the low poly LOD V4 before but never been able to find it. Checked my geometries folder again but it's not there, I wonder if it didn't come with my version of Carrara (I've had Carrara 7, Carrara 7 pro, Carrara8 pro, and Carrara 8.5 pro), or maybe there's some special download that's needed to get it? I've always been curious about this, since I've never been able to find the dang thing.
Okay, FWIW, here's where I am so far in a procedure to implement stringtheory9's brilliant idea of getting cloth to collide with moving characters by making a "suit of armor" that is designated as softbody and softbody attach objects:
1. With your character all morphed and ready to go, zero its pose, then select your character's "Model" and export as an .obj, making sure you specify to include morphs and skinning.
2. Load that .obj into Hex, making sure you specify you want a separate polymesh for each shading domain. You'll get the morphed character mesh, already divided into pieces.
3. Tweak the parts if you want, then save the multi-piece mesh as a .CAR file.
4. Import that file into your Carrara scene, and you'll get the morphed mesh in pieces that are ready to make the suit of armor.
5. Delete everything you don't need (eyes, tongue, etc.).
6. Move the parts you do need into place, aligning with your rigged characters corresponding parts.
7. For each piece, apply both a soft body and soft body attach modifier. In the "Select tree" for the Attach modifer, enter the corresponding bone name from the main character. Also, select/paint all vertices of the corresponding piece of armor.
I think that's about it....I'm sure I'm missing some steps....but it's close...I think...
I've searched for the low poly LOD V4 before but never been able to find it. Checked my geometries folder again but it's not there, I wonder if it didn't come with my version of Carrara (I've had Carrara 7, Carrara 7 pro, Carrara8 pro, and Carrara 8.5 pro), or maybe there's some special download that's needed to get it? I've always been curious about this, since I've never been able to find the dang thing.
Well dang, scratch that, I just went to my products downloads and pulled up the V4 base and re-downloaded, and there the low poly figures are, in their own folder. So I guess I do have access to them after all, like everybody else. :) I have no idea why they didn't download/load in the first place back when I first loaded V4 all those many years ago...
That was my assumption also when Bullet first came out, partly because way back when it was a huge factor in cloth sims. But I did a lot of testing years ago, and found it made almost no difference, to my surprise.
My experience with Bullet is that it's far more important if you have a clean uniform mesh, as well as other considerations. I've done bullet sims with impossibly dense, but clean and perfect meshes, and it runs fine. And I've done sims with low poly trash meshes that take a week to run, or just crash. There are other reasons for speed, but I encourage you to make a similar test before you automatically run for a LOD mesh or something. And make sure you're doing apples to apples. If you use a nasty LOD mesh, then it might be unrealistically slow. And vice versa, if you're using a high poly mesh that WASN'T DESIGNED FOR CLOTH SIMS, then you might also get unrealistic results.
Dang, I have to use Hex... the blasted thing always locks up and crashes for me. Last time I tried Hex I left nearly in tears of frustration... Maybe I'll get lucky though.
Thanks for this Joe, it sounds like a very simple solution and this is a very clear path.
Also I have to say I'm not that worried about the bends of the various pieces of armor not being smoothly connected. The cloth will ride over this invisible armor anyway, after all, so I don't think the fact there are two soft body parts instead of one deforming connected one will make much (or any) visible difference. I could be wrong though, must test... :)
Maybe you don't have to use Hex. The saved .obj out of Carrara has all the body parts separated already, but when you re-import into Carrara it comes in as one object. But if you go to Carrara modeller, the separate pieces are there.
If you can figure how to get the Carrara Assembly room to recognize all the existing pieces of the .obj you're all set. It was just easier for me to go to Hex and back because it broke them up cleanly.
DAZ 3D has always suggested using hair caps for the use of distributing dynamic hair sets - and nowadays, doing that has become even more important because (I haven't read all of the details on this but...), as Ringo Monfort has dicovered, some of the Genesis characters come into the hair model room in trigons, but switch back to polygons in all other rooms, completely messing up hair designs and such. I'm not sure how far they've got with determining what was happening. Like I said, I didn't read too heavily into it.
Anyways, Just do a quick "Construct > Sphere" while modeling in the Assembly room, delete parts of the sphere and make a simple cap that you can put your own name onto! ;)
Then you can just leave the cap invisible, which can then be used even with the DAZ hair caps, since you'll never actually see it in the render anyways!
In doing so, just keep in mind that you WILL want your cap to be a nicely modeled piece, with a good UV Mapping onto it. I could be wrong here, but I think that might make a difference in the quality of the dynamics.
DAZ 3D has always suggested using hair caps for the use of distributing dynamic hair sets - and nowadays, doing that has become even more important because (I haven't read all of the details on this but...), as Ringo Monfort has dicovered, some of the Genesis characters come into the hair model room in trigons, but switch back to polygons in all other rooms, completely messing up hair designs and such. I'm not sure how far they've got with determining what was happening. Like I said, I didn't read too heavily into it.
Anyways, Just do a quick "Construct > Sphere" while modeling in the Assembly room, delete parts of the sphere and make a simple cap that you can put your own name onto! ;)
Then you can just leave the cap invisible, which can then be used even with the DAZ hair caps, since you'll never actually see it in the render anyways!
In doing so, just keep in mind that you WILL want your cap to be a nicely modeled piece, with a good UV Mapping onto it. I could be wrong here, but I think that might make a difference in the quality of the dynamics.
Hmm, interesting thought. I think shoulders and neck are important for the hair to collide against too, but then again that could be achieved with dropping really any primitive object into those places onto the relevant bones, much like what we're contemplating with the pieces of soft body armor too. This might be a quick, easy solution. And it has the great virtue of being simple, meaning less moving parts to the idea that I can screw up in some unforeseen way...
Maybe you don't have to use Hex. The saved .obj out of Carrara has all the body parts separated already, but when you re-import into Carrara it comes in as one object. But if you go to Carrara modeller, the separate pieces are there.
If you can figure how to get the Carrara Assembly room to recognize all the existing pieces of the .obj you're all set. It was just easier for me to go to Hex and back because it broke them up cleanly.
Hmmm, I'll explore and see, there must be a way but I'm not much of a whiz with any modelling program. I'm not sure if there's a tool to 'detach' objects from each other, but I'm sure there must be.
Hmmm, I'll explore and see, there must be a way but I'm not much of a whiz with any modelling program. I'm not sure if there's a tool to 'detach' objects from each other, but I'm sure there must be.
I found 1 way of doing it, which I bring the V4 object into the vertex room, then Selection - select by Shading Domain and choose one of the areas, then under Model menu 'Detach Polygons' and then repeat the process for the other body parts. I haven't assembled a whole suit of 'soft armor' yet, but this seems like an easy way to do it. Cool beans! :)
Edit: this actually isn't quite right though, I realized, because the shading domains of how the device is textured is different than the exact areas of the mesh that are affected by each bone... not that this method can't work, but might require a little bit of adjusting once fitted on my V4...
Hmm, interesting thought. I think shoulders and neck are important for the hair to collide against too, but then again that could be achieved with dropping really any primitive object into those places onto the relevant bones, much like what we're contemplating with the pieces of soft body armor too. This might be a quick, easy solution. And it has the great virtue of being simple, meaning less moving parts to the idea that I can screw up in some unforeseen way...Absolutely! So you simply use the hair product, which comes installed onto its own hair cap, onto a Proxy of the user's choosing! ;)
It all stays the same, except that the hair is originally (and forever) grown onto a separate mesh - make the mesh the same as the painting that you would create as the Hair Growing region on the figure - which gives a perfect example of what the cap could look like - just like your growing region in your most excellent tutorial series.
Select By > Name > then chose the "Polygons" radio button
Ah that's awesome, and was sitting right in front of my eyes too :) I probably would never have seen it in a thousand years though, lol.
...as with many things with our most wonderful Carrara... it just never ceases to amaze... and get bigger, more wonderful!